Across the Bar

Drew Phelps finally gets Round To It; The Meat Helmets decay away

Drew Phelps has been around for so long and played with so many people -- including Sara Hickman, the Dixie Chicks, and Café Noir -- that he has the reputation of a hired gun, to the point that even when he's playing gigs with his own outfit, people ask him who he's performing with. "I'm the guy that's always been sitting in the background," he says. "I'm trying to break out of that." To that end, he recently released his first solo album, Round To It, on Fwingo Records. The disc is a collection of songs Phelps has written over the years, some a decade old, that he didn't record until May. Phelps says he didn't even feel the need to put them on tape until he met his current backing band, pianist Brad Williams, drummer Woody Burner, and guitarist Richard McLure. You can hear whether it was worth the wait when his band performs some of the songs from the album on October 7 at Terilli's...

The Meat Helmets -- the band frontman John Freeman says has "been burning the torch that was lit by groups like 45 Grave, Crime, The Misfits, and April Wine" -- will play for the final time on October 9 at a Good/Bad Art Collective benefit in Denton, which also features sets by the Riverboat Gamblers, Gospel Swingers, and Austin's The Deadites.